


Revels of the Alien

by fresne



Category: Man of Steel (2013)
Genre: F/M, Fluffy, G rated, Misses Clause Challenge, POV Female Character, Yuletide 2014, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-03 06:31:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2841401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fresne/pseuds/fresne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"So, you're taking me to den of drugs and iniquity is what you're saying," said Lois. </p><p>"Also, gambling," said Clark helpfully.</p><p>Lois rolled her eyes. "I already said I'm in. You don’t have to keep sweetening the pot."</p><p>Or how Lois spent Christmas with Clark in Smallville.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Revels of the Alien

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fleete](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fleete/gifts).



"Come home with you. To the farm. For Christmas. Yeah, I could do that." Lois wanted very much to do that. She was also… Clark was inviting her home to spend Christmas with his family. Lois had met his Mother, and they exchanged the occasional email, mostly about Clark. Sure she'd kissed Clark after… well… and then there was the rest of what happened and relationships weren't really Lois' strong point. Interviewing Intergang members, or gun runners in Nicaragua or exposing slum lords with ties to the mob or getting an exclusive interview with the Dictator of Genovia, or… she had a lot of strong points. Relationships weren't one of them.

The article that she could never write would be entitled, "Christmas with a Superman" and it would not win her another Pulitzer, because no one would ever see it. 

"We, can't stay with Mom," Clark had his hands in his pockets. He did that a lot. Lois thought that was a habit he'd formed to keep his hands and arms contained close to his sides, "not that she wouldn't want us, but after the house was made unlivable, and it was so old anyway, she had a prefabricated home delivered."

Lois had a sudden vision of Clark as Superman carrying a doublewide house through the air to drop off in Kansas. But he shook his head, because even though he could not read her mind, they had spent a fair amount of time together while she gave him a crash course in the dying art of journalism, and he gave the both of them something to write about. 

Clark said, "A premade house still needs a foundation, Lois." He sighed. "Actually, she had the hardest problem getting her storm cellar done. "The first set of contractors she hired spent most of their time smoking dope," at her expression, he followed up with, "umm… marijuana, not cocaine," he quirked his lips, "cocaine that would be a little out of their price range. Though come to think of it there is a problem in the Midwest with crystal meth."

"So, you're taking me to den of drugs and iniquity is what you're saying," said Lois. 

"Also, gambling," said Clark helpfully.

Lois rolled her eyes. "I already said I'm in. You don’t have to keep sweetening the pot."

Clark smiled a wide brilliant smile that made her want to do things. Things she was not doing in the office. "What I was trying to say is her place is too small for more than one guest. We'll stay at the local hunting lodge with a few of my relatives."

There were so many things wrong with that statement she wasn't sure how to begin. "How is that going to work? Aren't all your relatives…" She waved a hand at the sky.

He shrugged. "Mom was the youngest of six kids and Dad was the second to youngest of eight. I was always a lot younger than the rest of them, what with being adopted. We'll…" he coughed, "we'll need to share a room." At her raised eyebrows, because yes, Lois was a Metropolitan girl, but they hadn't gotten beyond the occasional kiss goodnight. Also, surrounded by family didn't sound like the right time to start sharing a room. "The rooms mostly have twin beds." He sighed. "I'll be sleeping on the floor anyway. My feet stick off the end of every bed they have." He looked a little mournful, as if he couldn’t be thrown through a building and be fine.

"Like I said, count me in." Lois put her own hands in her pockets and tried not to think about his many cousins treating her like Clark's girlfriend, which she was, but she was a hard hitting journalist, not a girlfriend.

They flew out the next week. By coach. Clark barely fit in the seat next to her. He looked at her ruefully, "Normally, I just," he made a swooping gesture, "But we'll need to pick up a car in Kansas City… we'll need a car." By which he meant she'd need a car.

They flew into Kansas City and then drove a God-awful number of miles down I90 across some intensely flat countryside. They turned off at some wide spot in the road and proceeded to turn right and left down some small roads lined with black ice that stood out starkly on the slightly pink asphalt. 

Lois had been the same way when she was looking for the mystery man with the savior complex. But now that she was in the passenger seat, she was paying attention to town after town with populations of 78 or 102. Grain silos and large old brick school buildings boarded up, and tilting straight buildings as towns fell in on themselves. 

Dying small town America had been done, but not by Lois Lane, and therefore it hadn't really be done. She sent it off to Perry over the cell hotspot she made on her phone. Which was pretty good as long as they were passing through a town. Then again, given the size of the cell towers out here, it should be.

When they arrived in Smallville, they stopped at a station by the side of the road. Not to get gas as she might have expected, but to visit with Clark's Uncle John, on his Father's side. Uncle John was a bluff old man with a face lined from years of squinting at the sun and a hearty laugh. He was drinking coffee with a group of other men, none of them under sixty. They were drinking coffee, playing cards and bullshitting. Mostly they were bullshitting. The coffee was a quarter a cup, up from a dime when Clark was a boy. Everyone who bellied up to the table at the gas station rolled dice to see who'd pay for everyone. 

Lois won her roll, because she hadn't grown up on military bases for nothing. Clark lost. She couldn't tell if it was on purpose. 

They drove all of a couple buildings down and stopped in the market before they went to this hunting lodge. Lois had forgotten to buy wine, and she had a feeling she'd need something to get through the week. What she faced with was a two by five set of shelves that was mostly small flasks of whiskey, a choice of wine coolers and exactly one wine that wouldn't cause her tongue to fall out. Okay, there was boxed wine, but she had no idea how classy she needed to be with Clark's relatives. They bought ham, because apparently, Clark was supposed to bring ham, butter, and chips.

As they paid, she peered at the signs under the giant stuffed pheasant nailed. A series of informational posters explaining how a particularly sad faced young woman would know that she was pregnant. By the check out counter at the market. She could not call it a supermarket. 

In the same way that there were heroes and Clark was a superhero. In that vein this was barely a market. If this were Metropolis, this would count as the bodega on the corner. If this market were a hero, it would be a crossing guard.

They pulled into the hunting lodge, which Lois was happy to see was actually a decent sized building. She slipped on black ice getting out of the car, which set the thickset old man, standing on the porch for a smoke, laughing. Lois hadn't gotten where she was by being thin skinned. She hauled her own suitcase up the ice slick stairs, despite the fact that Clark could bench press a train. She said, "You know cigarettes kill," she wanted one, but that didn't stop the facts.

The man breathed out a plume of smoke and steam. "I like her, Clark." He shoved Clark's shoulder, which moved with the motion. Lois wondered how hard he tried to appear normal when he was around people. "Hey Clark, you've never brought a girl before." He waggled his eyebrows. "Something serious." 

Clark gently, so infinitely gently given what Lois knew, pushed the man aside. "Uncle Sammy, this is Lois. Lois, Uncle Sammy."

As they went in the door, Uncle Sammy laughed. "Hey, goofball, she a goofball too?"

"Yep, Uncle Sammy, we're all goofballs, here." Clark said, as they went out of the fifteen degrees outdoors and into the eighty degrees indoors. 

Lois shed her hat, scarf, gloves, coat, and sweater as quickly as she could before she had a heat stroke, which she almost had had following that story out of Kandahar. Clark, the alien, shed his clothing more slowly, which would be a clue right there. There was simply no way anyone human wouldn't move faster to get comfortable. A sign he wasn't uncomfortable.

Which was more than she could say after she was introduced to his Mother's brothers and sisters, and their children and grandchildren, and in one case a grandchild pregnant with a great-grandchild. 

Lois sat down at the long picnic bench tables set up in the hunting lodge's eating area. There were cousins from Nebraska and Arizona, and in one case an nurse who lived in Minneapolis. 

Lois wanted to leap on the other city dweller and hug her, but instead she stayed embedded, questioning Clark's relatives. Oh, they tried to question her, but they did not know who they were dealing with.

Cousin Kristin wanted to ask about what Clark had been doing over the last ten years, since he'd left home. "He's always so closed mouthed." Which Lois spun into getting the story of what Clark had been like when he was a child. Cousin Frank wanted Lois to know that Clark was adopted and generally adopted children turned out something terrible, and there was Clark abandoning his Mom after the tornado took his Dad, but at least he showed up a few times a year, but still… Lois gave that cousin her best glare. It was a very good glare. It rolled off Cousin Frank like a duck with water. Although, he did tell her about Clark always running everywhere when he was a boy. "Just couldn't sit still that boy."

There was Clark's little seven year old cousin, Tina, bouncing around and chattering about how she'd been learning about the planets on a computer program and she wanted to tell everyone about how if she could go to the moon, she'd down a flag in a crater that said, "Tina was here, and it would be the American flag too." Hearing a particularly dull faced teen say, "Is the crater the hole you stick the flag into," made Lois want to yell, "Your cousin can fly to the moon. He could put down your flag if you wanted." It also made her want to grab Tina and run. Except, Lois really – really – was not the maternal type.

Still, it was interesting. Clark's family was practically a down home soap opera when they got to gossipping. They were also card sharks addicted to some game called 65, whose rules they argued over constantly.

Clark was also a 65 addict. He smiled easily, "This is the only place I play." His cousins did their best to get some of that Metropolis money, but Lois figured out the rules of the game pretty quick, and ended up twenty cents richer.

Martha showed up in mid-game and Lois could see where Clark got his card shark tendencies from. 

For some reason, they stopped playing and all put on their coats, scarves, hats, and gloves. They all piled into cars and drove the two blocks onto the main street and parked before a building that looked a bit like an airplane hanger built from a kit. Inside, she was handed a raffle ticket. She looked around at the basketball gym, with low carpeted bleachers on each side. The room would seat maybe a hundred people on a good day. 

"Clark, why are we here?" hissed Lois. She did not like being scooped.

Clark grinned.

Lois held up the ticket she'd been handed when they walked into the room and waved it at Martha. "I still don't know why we're here." 

Martha laughed. "It's the Christmas drawing. The community center puts it on." 

There was not a single person in the room, who did not win a gift. Lois won a small paper wrapped ham. When they called her name, she yelled, "Bingo." What she was going to do with a ham, she didn't know. Martha said, "I'll eat it eventually." 

But Lois clutched it. "I've never won a ham before."

Clark also won ten dollars at the local hardware store. 

Once everyone had won a gift, Santa came in to the delight of every small child in the room. 

They all piled back into cars to drive the two buildings away for the Community Center. Lois bundled against the eighteen degrees and having already fallen again on the black ice did sort of see the point of driving. They ate sweets in a tiny room with people who all greeted Clark by name.

Afterwards, they all went back to the Lodge. Martha said, "My new house is lovely and all, but it really is a one butt house. But I'll take you back out there tomorrow." 

There was a fake tree set up in the large living room at the hunting lodge. 

They ate ham and potatoes for Christmas Eve dinner. They all played cards late into the night. Martha waited until Clark was waylaid by some cousin or other. While the clearly half deaf relative boomed, Martha said softly, "How is he sleeping?"

"How would I… I mean we're not… oh," said Lois. She sighed. "I don't think he sleeps much at all, but that doesn't have anything to do with what happened. I think," she pointed up, "it's the sunlight." She looked out at the dark night outside. "Not that there's much of that this time of year."

Martha put her hand over Lois'. "I'm glad he's found a place to settle."

As it turned out that night, Clark did sleep on the floor, while Martha and Lois shared one of the Lodge's rooms with him, which was… nothing like any Christmas Lois had ever imagined, and certainly not one with Clark. 

The next day there were presents. Lois had purchased a hasty card and gag magnet for Martha. While Martha had knitted her a small brown and blue cap. Clark gave his Mom a bag of tea in a burlap bag, which if Lois was not mistaken, and she wasn't, was from Southern India. Martha gave her son a Superman keychain, because Martha was awesome like that.

They stuffed in yet more ham and twenty-types of potato and pasta salad for Christmas. 

Some of Clark's relatives set out immediately after that. While others were staying until the next day.

They went out to the farm. Martha's new home was a tiny one butt house. It was at most 600 hundred feet of a single wide. There were two bedrooms, but one was full of sewing. Martha sighed. "Clark doesn't need to stay when he visits." She smiled at a wall covered in family photos with a the stages of young Clark beaming from various photos. "It's always good to have him."

Lois hugged her. She couldn't have said why. She wasn't a hugger. But she did it. Martha said, "Now what's that for."

Lois said, "I don't know." She wrinkled her nose at Clark who was grinning at her.

They went back to the hunting lodge, but stopped by the side of the road to look at the stars in the bright clear sky. Lois saw the Milky Way spread out bright in the cold night. She held Clark's hand in her well mittened one and said, "Is that what it looks like to you all the time?"

"I don't know," he said. "I don't know what the sky looks like to you." He kissed her extremely cold cheek. "Thank you."

"No," she said snuggling against the furnace of him. "Thank you, and Merry Christmas." She looked up again. "Which one do you think is yours?"

"Mine won't come up until morning." He breathed out a great plume of steam. "Want to see it?"

She laughed and they flew to Paris to see the sunrise, before heading back to face the dissipating tide of cousins, and play a few more rounds of 65. They went to bed early. Lois in a twin bed and Clark on the floor. They had a long drive and flight in the morning.

**Author's Note:**

> If after reading my fiction here, you would like to read more about me and my writing check out my profile.


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